mark grim's art

Artist Statement

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The images in my work draw on both art historical references and the day-to-day world around me.

I attempt to bring together a synthesis of the recognizable and the abstracted so that the end result contains echoes of the familiar, but that ultimately the sources cannot be pinned down too easily. This approach gives me the flexibility to work with both image and surface without being overly indebted to either one, thus keeping my options open longer.

In cultivating the painting as a hybrid of disparate elements, there is a chance of bringing personal discovery and surprise to the process. Along the way, I produce many paintings that come up short and need to be worked and re-worked until they arrive at some conclusion. In other words, a piece is finished when its structural elements transcend mere formality and the painting attains a coherent identity.

In addition, there is no predetermined position in the work. I am not interested in defending aesthetic turf. For example, the work is no more about standards of beauty than of ugliness. Instead, the process begs a kind of open ended-ness that, when pushed far enough, can develop in ways previously unimagined. Occasionally, my persistence yields forms that are simultaneously strange and familiar. When meaning oscillates between these two polarities, I know I am on to something worth fleshing out.

In the end, it is this tension between opposites that interests me and sustains the search.